WASHINGTON
IN THE FINAL hours before an unprecedented voting event, Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have managed - with commendable good will - to clear away the smaller issue branches that have obscured our view of them for a year. In the end, as in the beginning, what is left is the war in Iraq.
Finally, those Americans who don't see the choice as obvious or easy, and who have been seeking a more civilized atmosphere for their decision, got their wish.
On their 18th try at a useful joint appearance in California on Thursday, the two succeeded alone where multiple candidates had not in putting their differences in the context of much broader agreement. Where previously there had been dueling one-liners there was instead actual conversation, which tended to diminish the significance of the differences. Nothing, however, can diminish the war.
The best example of this dynamic was their first topic - healthcare. Senator Clinton has a point: If the right vision is to achieve universal insurance coverage at last, the right proposal must in fact be universal. Hers is, she said, and Obama's isn't. She has squarely faced her own contention that universal coverage can come in one of three forms - a single (as in government) payer or Medicare for all; a mandate on employers; or a mandate on individuals, her choice. And that puts her in line with the most important possible endorser this last weekend, John Edwards.
But it turns out that Obama also has a point. It is not merely, as he has often said, that he has never met anyone who lacked insurance because they didn't want it, but he has met hordes who lack insurance because they can't afford it or are denied access. The real challenge is to go at American healthcare's absurd cost structure with a sledgehammer. Where Clinton favors a "cap" on premiums, Obama wants a more aggressive slash producing savings that would help expand coverage. He also favors a requirement that all children be covered and a regulatory change so young people up to age 25 can be covered under their parents' plans.
Clinton is correct that this still isn't universal and that her own painful experience in the 1990s taught her that aiming low while special interests scheme to nibble comprehensive proposals to death is self-defeating.
But Obama is correct that her "mandate" is vague, that unlike Edwards she has never explained how it would work - whether through fines, wage garnishment, or income tax penalties. That avoids political problems but it hardly makes her a true proponent of "universal" coverage.
What makes the discussion all the more intriguing is that it is suffused by the recent experience of Massachusetts and its former governor, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. On paper it is a bipartisan, individual mandate system.
However, it has developed major problems, above all an explosion of costs and evidence that large numbers of people still can't afford the now-accessible coverage. With more money and hard work, the problems appear fixable. But politically, the results to date have helped torpedo a copy cat initiative in California and taken mandates out of the federal picture.
My own sense is that after a reasoned discussion, healthcare as a Clinton-Obama issue can be boiled down to pidgin Yiddish: mandate, schmandate. The same goes for domestic issues across the board.
That leaves the war. Passionate haters of this mess and of the lies and incompetence that produced it need to understand that this is no slam dunk liability for Clinton. You don't have to be an apologist to understand her point that it is vital to make sure that the war is ended with care and skill - even at the expense of a hard-and-fast timetable. Her attention to the demands of this task is a true plus, worthy of a president.
But even apologists have to recognize the power of Obama's assertion that while it is imperative to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in, it is also imperative that we not merely stop the war but the mindset that produced it.
And Clinton did not buttress her larger point by calling President Bush's 2002 case for Iraq "credible" or by misstating the thrust of a critical pre-war proposal by her Armed Services Committee chair, Carl Levin of Michigan.
The campaign, however, has finally empowered the silent majority of brooders over partisans. Clintonistas should stow their visions of chauvinists rampant, as should Obamaniacs their suspicions of race cards on the table. Making history is supposed to be tough; lo and behold, it is.
Thomas Oliphant is a former Globe columnist.
